alex chiang: web 6.0

Turns out I’ve been blogging for five years now. Sure hasn’t seemed like it’s been that long.

I’ve also been reflecting quite a bit about personal growth and this snippet of recent email correspondence with a friend seems to capture where my thoughts are headed these days. I am Alex’s conscience, seeking rebirth.

A friend writes:

The moment that the government supports a “right” to some thing, such as health care benefits, it unavoidably violates its citizens right to live. For the things men strive for, such as cars, houses, jobs, health care, do no exist in nature. They are products of other men, who is to provide them?

I used to be a big L libertarian cum objectivist. These days, not so much.

The society that Rand envisions fails on two axes.

First, it is simply impractical, both in theory and in practice. The latter is more easily addressed; eliminating any sort of social safety net in the western world is politically untenable. No one can possibly get elected on that platform — even the Republicans know better than to mess with Medicare/Medicaid.

But even the idea we somehow could create a society where the government is setup to prevent men from “stealing” from each other is impossible assuming you wanted to keep a democracy of sorts. As Rand was so bent on demonizing in Atlas Shrugged, the tyranny of the majority ensures that a government where the officials rule based on a mandate from the citizenry must necessarily (due to human nature) accommodate exactly that tyrannical majority. You could setup some alternate form of governance, but it wouldn’t be democracy.

More importantly, though, Rand’s utopia fails along the ethical axis.

Given that there will always exist an uneven distribution of resources in the world (raw materials on the country level, intelligence and ability on the individual level), those who are lucky are *already* compensated according to whatever opportunity has been afforded to them.

I need to talk about two concepts before getting to the meat of my argument.

First, the economic concept of marginal utility is supremely relevant to this discussion. A millionaire who earns one extra dollar won’t even notice it. An indigent who earns the same dollar might be able to eat that day. So when discussing “stealing”, it behooves us to understand exactly *which* dollar you’re talking about stealing. If you’re stealing my first dollar to pay Paul, that will affect me several orders of magnitude compared to stealing my millionth dollar.

Second, I deliberately used the word “lucky” above. Warren Buffet has remarked that his talents and skills would have been absolutely useless to him had he been born in the middle of rural India. His greatest stroke of luck was being born in America, where he was able to exercise the ability he was born with. In other words, context matters. How many Ramanujans out there are languishing because they had the bad luck to be born in Peshawar?

Those two concepts are things Rand conveniently avoided in all of her screeds. And they’re also why her utopia is ethically flawed. The concept that all men are afforded equal opportunity to strive towards their desires is simply not true. Had Dagny Taggart been born in the Middle East, she simply would not have had a chance to exercise her talent.

So assuming there are hidden Dagny Taggarts out there in the world who are not realizing their potential, it is ethically superior to enable them than to not. This is not to say that we should strive to simply satisfy all their worldly desires; no, we should only strive to provide an environment where it is even possible for people of talent to succeed.

What best way to enable such people then? Take the marginal dollars of those who can afford it most and create those positive environments. Yes, you are creating a system whereby man does not own 100% of the fruits of his labor, but the oft-overlooked principal is that man’s labor does not come 100% from his own ability.

I also describe a utopia, I realize this. I disagree with the current implementation of taxation and redistribution of wealth. But in the grand scheme of things, I believe that it is ethically superior, not to mention economically maximizing, to create and live and participate in a society where those who have most contribute to the welfare of those who have least.

Ron Paul might be a great candidate — I haven’t started paying attention yet. But I reject the idea that Ayn Rand got it right. And I reject the notions of big L Libertarianism. *Our* government may not be the most efficient in terms of enabling our society for maximum potential, but it doesn’t mean that *all* governments (save Libertarianism) will also fail at maximizing potential.

In any case, thanks for the discussion.